Facebook Photo Sync: Nine things you should know

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Facebook has introduced a new feature for iPhone, iPad and Android users which means you can automatically sync any photos you take on your mobile device with your Facebook account.

This removes the nuisance of having to manually choose which photos to upload.

Here are nine things you should know about Facebook Photo Syncing:

You have to opt-in to Facebook Photo Sync. Facebook hasn’t turned it on by default. Chances are that your first knowledge of it will be when you access Facebook on your iOS or Android device, and are encouraged to “Get started”.

It’s good that Facebook has decided to make users consciously opt-in to this service. There would have been a loud out-cry if they hadn’t.

If you enable the feature, your last 20 photographs and every subsequent photo you take, will be automatically uploaded in the background to a private Facebook album. So you may want to check what photos you have already taken first.

The photos that you have synced from your phone are not visible to any other Facebook users. When you view your synced photos, you can choose then to share them on your Facebook timeline or send them as a message to a friend.

If you’re worried that Facebook Photo Sync will eat into your data plan, you can tell Facebook to only sync when you are on Wi-Fi rather than via your cellular network.

(Note that Facebook says it will sync photos at a smaller size – approximately 100KB – when you use a 3G or 4G network)

Automatic uploading of every photo you take means every photo you take. Yes, including the ones you took for that guy you’re flirting with, or the one you snapped of that part of your body you can’t quite see properly with a mirror.

Furthermore, if someone takes a photograph of you without your permission it will be automatically uploaded to Facebook – you may demand that they delete the photo off their phone, but will it also have been removed from their private Facebook album?

Every photograph synced from your phone will be able to be mined for information by Facebook.

Photos taken on mobile devices can include meta data such as the location where the photo was taken – and this could be used to determine where you are, and help Facebook display localised advertising.

Furthermore, Facebook could integrate its facial recognition technology with Photo Sync, analyse your photos to see whose faces it recognises and automatically tag their names.

Over time a comprehensive database of where you have been, and who with, is built up.

If you opt-in to Facebook Photo Sync, you are no longer in charge of what photos you upload to Facebook. In the past, you could decide what images you uploaded to the social network, and which pictures it could analyse for its own purposes.

Now, all photos – good and bad – will be available to Facebook. That doesn’t mean anyone apart from you and Facebook’s servers will be able to see them, but there’s clearly a reduction in your level of control.

You can learn more about Facebook’s new Photo Sync feature by visiting its official help pages.

If you are on Facebook and want to keep yourself informed about the latest news from the world of internet security and privacy, join the Sophos Facebook page where more than 200,000 people regularly discuss these issues and best practice.

I use the iPhone camera for all kinds of things. Snap the grocery list that's written on the whiteboard. Reach behind the desktop computer and snap its serial number. Or I'll take three pics of a scene from different angles and choose the best one to upload. Even without the significant privacy issues, I wouldn't (and didn't) allow this feature.

Yes, I used my smartphone to take a snap of the inaccessible serial number on the back of a TV before. I can’t imagine why I would want that uploaded to an (admittedly) private album on Facebook either.

It's interesting that Google offered this feature from day one with very little comment. It seems that, rightly or wrongly, many people don't trust Facebook. On the face of it, this new feature does no more than the Google version.

I'm not saying that Facebook Photo Sync is a bad thing. Indeed there are aspects of the technology which Facebook seems to have implemented quite sensibly. But I think it's right for people to hear the benefits and the potential drawbacks, so they can make their own mind up about whether they wish to enable the feature or not.

Yup, there are aspects of this tech that are VERY useful. Snapping the inaccessible back of your TV and then having that pic auto-synch to your PC so you can read the serial number via a decent-sized screen, say. Or having your photos saved in case anything happens to your phone. Or in some cases being able to recover a stolen device because the thief took photos with it and they synched to your account.

But yes, Facebook does complicate the issue somewhat! Let's just say I said no to FB's kind offer, and will be sticking with Dropbox for my photo synchin g. (-:

So which photos get uploaded exactly? The photos you take using the phone's main camera app, or the ones you take when you select the "photo" option on the Facebook app? If the latter, then at least you'll be aware that if you're in the Facebook app and taking a photo, then it will be uploaded. Facebook's poor help pages don't seem to clarify this at all.

You can delete any photo that is synced to FB. I am not saying that FB will or will not keep a copy. But, just letting people know that you can delete them by going to photos >sync and tapping (on your phone) or clicking (from your PC) and delete.

≎ The 10th thing is old news, but relevant: Facebook believes it has unlimited rights to use any photo uploaded to their system, for any purpose.

All my photos go to flickr (where I can choose from a variety of copyright licenses), and I link some of them to Facebook. 9They claim they have rights to the thumbnail, but my flickr upload establishes my copyright.)

This is terrible. There are thousands of images uploaded to my facebook account before I realized this was happening. I do not recall giving facebook authorization to do this and feel that my privacy has been invaded. Even worse, deleting all of the images one by one will take days. I’m on a mac and I haven’t been able to find a way to delete the images all at once. I feel that facebook has purposely made it impractical to remove all of these images.

Are there updated instructions for this? I tried to follow the link for removal and the options on my iPhone are not available. Help! I hit the wrong button by mistake and I want to turn this off as soon as possible!!!

Not only has FB removed the option to Delete your Synced pictures, I am running some tests, and it seems that FB is syncing my pictures even if I delete the FB and Messenger apps.

I deleted the apps, took a picture, then I moved the picture from my Camera folder to another folder and after that I reinstalled FB, after the reinstall I open my FB app and I see the picture I took while the apps were deleted stored in their database.

How is this possible or even allowed?, I deleted the apps so they would stop storing my pictures in their database and yet this didn’t help. Most of the pictures I want erased are obviously nudes. .. Feeling Violated.

I accidentally allowed fb to sync my photos to my fb gallery photos when I got on there to look at my photos 2 days later I saw pictures that I deleted from my photo app on my fb photo gallery, very private ones that I wouldn’t want anyone to see. I had to delete each photo… I hope no one saw them.